Welcome to the first lesson of the Rock Licks Booster course. In this lesson we’re going to look at a cool-sounding lick that uses the E Minor Blues scale. This is a six note scale that uses the following notes…
E Minor Blues Scale:
If you haven’t memorised the notes of this scale before, then I’d recommend doing it now. We’ll be looking at other licks later on that use the E Minor Blues scale, so it’s definitely worth investing the time to learn it properly now.
Let’s now take a look at the lick…
Rock Guitar Lick 1: Blues-Rock Lick
This lick has a great bluesy sound, and it reminds me of something that players like Angus Young or Jimmy Page might play. Although it’s a fairly simple lick to play, it’s a really good idea to pay attention to the following details…
- Most of the lick is played using sixteenth-notes. This means that you’ll need to play it using four evenly-spaced notes per beat. If you’re not yet at the level where you can play sixteenth notes easily, then another option would be to change the timing to eighth-notes. This would mean only playing two evenly-spaced notes per beat.
- Make sure that you make the pull-offs sound clear. There are three pull-offs being used in the lick. Do your best to make them sound loud and clear. It’s quite a common problem for guitarists to just lift their fingers off when doing a pull-off. This usually causes the pull-offs to sound much quieter than the picked notes. To create a clear sounding pull-off you need to do a downwards flick to articulate the note clearly. Watch the video closely to see what I mean by this.
- Watch out for the finger-roll. If you look closely at the TAB, you’ll notice that the three notes being played at the 14th fret are all being fretted using the third finger. To make these notes sound smooth, you’ll need to use a finger-roll.
- Choose a target speed to suit your level. On the video I demonstrate the lick at two different speeds (50 bpm and 100 bpm). These speeds are for demonstration purposes only. The speed you aim for will depend entirely on how advanced a player you are.
That’s all for this lesson. Hope you enjoyed it!
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